Posted by Janet Harriett on Oct.28, 2009

Bat Box photo ⓒ iStockPhoto - bgmiller

Last week’s Bat Myths and Facts showed some of the ways that bats help the environment, while not presenting any greater danger or risk of disease than other wild animals, and Bat Conservation discussed some of the hazards that face bats from natural and human-created sources. While some of bats’ biggest perils come from larger concerns like white nose syndrome, wind turbines and habitat loss, you can help bats in your own neighborhood.

Leave Bats Alone

The biggest way for most people to help bats is to keep your distance. Human-bat interaction is a no-win situation. Although bat-to-human rabies transmission is rare, rabies is fatal, so prudence dictates assuming a worst-case scenario: that a bat that has come into contact with a person is rabid and has bitten the person unless the person is an alert adult who can be absolutely certain he or she was not bit. Infants, babies and adults with diminished mental or cognitive capacity should always be assumed to have been bitten if a bat is found near them.

Unfortunately, this does not end well for either the bat or the humans. If the bat can be captured, animal control will need to test the bat for rabies, and the testing process kills the bat. If the bat isn’t tested, any human that might have been bitten must undergo expensive post-exposure rabies treatment, a series of 5 vaccine injections that is only effective if administered before rabies symptoms appear. Only one person is known to have survived rabies without the post-exposure vaccine treatment.

Bat-Proof Your Home

While bats can be a boon to people, eating mosquitoes and other pest insects that can carry disease and damage food crops, bats can get too close for comfort if they are in your home. Though most bats aren’t rabid and will only bite if panicked, people can and have caught rabies from bats, and bats inside home living spaces tend to panic.

From a bat’s point of view, attics and home crawlspaces are nice roosting spots. Trusses and joists provide toeholds and the spaces are warm and out of the elements. If a bat or group of bats decides to take up residence in your attic, improper removal can make the situation worse. Simply sealing up the access point may trap bats inside, particularly if you seal the points of entry during the day or any time during the summer, when bats are raising their young. Trapped bats will seek alternative exits, which may lead them through your living quarters where they may come in contact with people or pets.

Wildlife control professionals can remove bats safely and humanely from an attic or crawlspace and ensure that bats don’t get back in. If you don’t have a bat problem, you can prevent one by making sure that potential entry points are screened and sealed. Bats commonly get into a house through chimneys, gaps at the roof line, vents and dormers, so carefully check these places for any potential entry points and seal them off with screening or an appropriate patch material. Bats can get in through a hole only 1/2 inch in diameter, so look carefully.

Build a Bat Box

Bats tend to roost in homes and buildings only when their preferred locations in trees or caves are not available. You can encourage bats in your neighborhood without encouraging them in your home by building a bat box.

Bat boxes serve the same function for bats that birdhouses do for birds. They’re a place to rest at night and raise young. Bats don’t build nests, and tend to prefer tighter living quarters than birds, so bat boxes are smaller. A single bat house, if made and situated properly, can hold a hundred bats in something smaller than a pillow.

The Organization for Bat Conservation has designs and photographic guides for building your own bat house, as well as an online store to order premade bat houses and bat house kits.

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Posted under Nature and Environment.